


Gerry and Gerty's Funeral Home Caper

by Aesoleucian



Series: Gertrude Robinson's Extremely Temporary Home for Directionless Young Men [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, I feel so betrayed that this is the FIRST work in the gerard & gertrude tag, lol, mother-son bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 11:59:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Despite the title this is a semi-serious introspection on Gerard and Gertrude's relationship and how she really should have been a better mother. I'm so mad at her, but she's so dreamy?





	Gerry and Gerty's Funeral Home Caper

There is something perilously easy about Gertrude’s professional usage of her tools, Gerard included. Let him just say that it’s lucky he never got into the habit of calling Mary ‘Mum,’ or he would have accidentally done the same to Gertrude. As much as he likes Gertrude he _is_ aware of how dangerous it would be to let her know how he feels about her— _that_ he feels, even. Every other person she has ever worked with has been disposable, and Gerard isn’t about to add himself to that list for the crime of being inconveniently emotional.

They’re in Los Angeles at the moment, for once relaxing while they wait for one of their Hunters to break cover. Gerard is generally wary of any place with too many approaches, but it’s pretty funny to see Gertrude trying to blend in with normal people out for a holiday. She’s sitting on a beach towel with her sleeves rolled up as a small concession to the heat. Reading, of course, a war history with the battlers’ miniscule eyes carefully excised from the cover; she rolls a scalpel absently between her fingers, ready for the moment when she turns the page to find another illustration. The towel, pink and orange and bought by Gerard expressly to look ridiculous, is already littered with tiny diamonds of paper. All carefully turned blank-side-up.

For his part Gerard is taking the opportunity to meet the ocean. Just at its edge it holds little of the Vast about it, so he stands watching little waves wash over the eyes that watch over his ankles, slightly hypnotized. It’s a bit kiddish of him, but he has no interest in staying inside Gertrude’s personal space bubble, which today is roughly two meters in diameter. He could be looking for shells, but he wants to not be looking for anything for a little while.

Still, every so often (carefully timed to minimize strain) he looks through the lens of himself at the taquería where their Hunter is lingering over lunch. This is his part, as Gertrude actively avoids using or even receiving gifts from the Eye—Gerard has long learned that beggars can’t be choosers—but his gut burns with the desire to avoid disappointing her. Yes, even though he recognizes that he shouldn’t care, that it’s dangerous for him to care. He tells himself not to and then does anyway, damn her. Damn her for being just _slightly_ more like a proper mother or even a proper friend. Actively cutting out his feelings like paper eyes is exhausting, but at least it’s a convenient reminder to distrust her.

Ah. There. He sloshes out of the shallows and back toward the towel, where he starts rubbing the sand off his feet so he can put his boots back on.

Gertrude looks up over the top of her book. “She’s moving, then?”

“Yeah. Looked like she was just heading up that big street there.”

Gertrude rises like a wading bird, brushing a few stray eyes off her blouse, and snaps her book shut. Gerard hastily does up the laces on his boot and follows. “Leave the towel,” she says as if she knows he was about to pick it up and start folding it. “Heaven knows we have no use for it.”

“That was ten dollars,” he says mildly. Mostly he’s just peeved he won’t get to see her sitting on it again.

“Time is worth far more than money,” she says. Right, he thinks as she starts toward the road with strides as long as her short legs can manage. That’s why we’ve been hanging out at the seaside for two hours. Gertrude is probably never going to admit that she very occasionally enjoys ‘relaxing.’

He catches up to her in a few steps. “Does that mean you’ll pay me back for the towel, then?”

“I paid for your tickets to this country.”

“Fair enough. Oh, hang on, she’s turned. This way.”

They follow the Hunter a little over a mile, by which time both of them are sweating through their shirts. Gerard may _slightly_ regret his pride in refusing to wear anything but black jeans, but he’d no more admit it than Gertrude would admit she regrets wearing long sleeves. There’s something unfortunately kind of charming in the fact that she won’t stop dressing like an Archivist even while on the hunt. It’s integrated into her personality—oh, hang on, that’s not charming, that’s worrying.

Gerard does _not_ like the Archivist anywhere near as much as he likes Gertrude Robinson.

“She’s gone into… a funeral home. Bit odd for a Hunter. But I know what I Saw,” he assures Gertrude.

“Hm,” she says. “We’re going to wash our faces and have some lunch.”

Gerard doesn’t ask any questions. He’ll understand why in a bit, and he _is_ very hungry. They stop in at some kind of health food place a couple buildings down. Gertrude has an unfortunate liking for salads—at least, unfortunate for Gerard, who never quite made it to whatever social class you’ve got to be to actually enjoy eating quinoa. He gets a salad with both chicken and bacon, which is the best he can do, and slowly freezes in the air conditioning with his damp face.

“I’m sure you can guess the plan, as this isn’t the first funeral home we’ve infiltrated,” Gertrude tells him. He nods. “Is the Hunter still inside?”

He pauses his chewing and focuses inward. “Difficult to tell. She’s inside a building, at least. In what looks like an office, talking to a man in business formal. He’s not afraid of her.” He hisses through his teeth and lets it go. “That’s it. My head is done with Seeing for today. Would it kill you to learn this too?”

“Possibly,” she says coldly. They don’t speak for the rest of lunch, leaving Gerard to wonder whether she expects it to kill _him_ , or worse. Still disposable, but sturdy at least, he thinks sourly. Gertrude doesn’t speak, in fact, until they enter the funeral home and the director or secretary or something comes and greets them. Then she says, with just enough of an edge of bitter tiredness,

“Comparison shopping. I’m sure you of all people know a funeral has to be perfect.”

The woman’s eyes flick from Gertrude to Gerard. “Your husband?”

“Yes. Heart attack.”

She smiles sympathetically at both of them but especially at Gerard, who’s hanging back looking uncomfortable and glancing around at everything. A pity his head is splitting open, or he’d be able to tell from this distance exactly where the Hunter is. Gertrude asks for a tour so she can wave him around like a lint roller picking up signs of the Hunter’s passing through. And the Hunter _has_ been here, recently. Gerard leans against the walls in a corner between two tall potted plants while Gertrude spins some bullshit about immigrating for a professorship at UCLA. He lets his eyes close and leans his head back tiredly, trying to feel through the walls and through his headache. The Hunter is almost certainly still here.

“Thomas,” snaps Gertrude, and he jolts back to attention. “Don’t lurk in corners.”

He pushes off and slouches toward her. “Would you relax, Mum? He’s not gonna get any deader from me not paying attention. It’s peaceful here. I think he’d like it.” She shoots him a tired, irritated look, and he shoves his hands back in his pockets. “I can just see him being here, is all.” Her eyebrows do the little message-received twitch, and she turns back to the director to start making arrangements. She’ll stall as long as she can; he wanders off to inspect a couple of promising doors.

This turns out to be a mistake, though he doesn’t realize it until halfway through picking a lock he hears a _thump_ in the front room. He pauses just long enough to hear another one before he sprints back out to find Gertrude losing a wrestling match over a baseball bat with the funeral director.

“Hey! What are you doing!” he yells. The director kicks Gertrude in the chest, sending her flying into the wall, and turns toward him. “She’s frail, Mum is!” The director is just confused enough (and small enough) that he can bowl her over and take the bat. He goes for a blow on the back of the neck, harder to misjudge than the temple, and she slumps to the floor.

He pauses a moment, breathing hard before he drags her into the office by the front desk. Then he comes out and crouches by Gertrude, balancing himself with the bat. “You alive?”

Gertrude groans in response and tries to sit up. “I may have a concussion.”

“Anything else?” She shakes her head carefully and accepts his hand up. “But you’re still in no condition to be hunting Hunters, and I’d rather not either. I’m not exactly a martial arts specialist. Or a baseball player.”

“Hmh,” says Gertrude. “This may be our only opportunity.”

“You make opportunities, Gertrude. That’s precisely what you do. So don’t give me that bullshit.”

“We are running out of time. Let me tell you something, Gerard. The way I create opportunities is by not ignoring them when they are dropped in front of me on a silver platter. This is such an opportunity. And with some ingenuity none of this will prevent us from seizing it. We simply need to disguise our presence.”

He lets her boss him into camouflage while she goes to the nearest convenience store for ice. And then he spends the next five hours tailing the Hunter all over the city, gritting his teeth through his steadily worsening headache every time he loses her. He can’t even be that angry at Gertrude, because she’s right: this is invaluable information they couldn’t have gotten at any other time. They have a comprehensive list of allies, and they’ve confirmed that three powers are allied for this ritual.

No, screw that, he _can_ be mad at her when he stumbles into the motel room two hours past dark and she’s freshly showered and reading her history book. “Tell me what you found,” she says.

He kicks off his boots with so little coordination that he falls onto the bed and just lies there.

“Gerard.”

“Yeah, hi,” he says into the bedspread. “I feel like I got repeatedly hit by a truck. You’re very welcome for doing one hundred per cent of the work.” She waits in frosty, expectant silence until he digs his phone out of his pocket and chucks it at her. “It’s all in my notes. I’ll talk t’you about it in the morning, if I’m alive then.”

Despite how much his head hurts he starts to fall asleep almost instantly. So he’s never quite sure whether he dreams her very quiet “Thank you, Gerard.”

**Author's Note:**

> You know, I thought for a long time that Gerry didn’t actually have any powers from Beholding, until yesterday when I listened to First Aid again and realized he was somehow using the same knowledge-seeking power Elias has to find out passcodes. I just assume he’s not as good at it. And we do know Gertrude never even learned any other languages… unless of course she was just pretending to keep Michael out of her hair.


End file.
